| In 479 B.C,the Greeks,led by the Spartan Pausanias,won the decisive battle of Plataea.But the war was not officially over,and Greece faced the threat of Persian invasion until the peace treaty was signed in 449 B.C.Against this background,Athens and the Ionians formed the Delian League.With the expansion of the Delian League and the failure of expedition to Egypt,the transformation of the Delian League into the Athenian Empire was formally completed in 454 B.C,when Athens moved the league treasury to Athens.According to the traditional view,Athens carried out a series of political,economic,cultural and other policies in order to strengthen the control over the members of the empire during the imperial period.These studies are all based on the perspective of Athens and lack of research on the history of the dependent polis and their position in the empire.Therefore,the author intends to start from the history of the dependent polis,focus on the stronger polis in the empire,prove that they played the role of secondary hegemonic leaders in the Athenian empire,and rediscuss the Athenian imperialism in combination with the historical information reflected by the tribute list.First of all,this paper studies the meaning of atotaxis and syntely in the tribute list.As proved by Greek grammarian of the Roman era,atotaxis means " The city-state groups that had jointly paid the tribute paid separately." syntely means "groups jointly bear costs and jointly pay tribute.The author believes that the historical phenomenon represented by these two processes is the adjustment of the subordinate states in order to coordinate the local conditions and the contributions,rather than the means for Athens to obtain more economic income or a political strategy to weaken the subordinate states in the traditional view.At the same time,I discusse the origin of the city states in the special rubrics of the tribute list,and concludes that the city states under these two rubrics include both the new entrants and the cities that emerged through apoaxis.After clarifying the concept in the tribute list,according to the relevant contents of tribute list,the writer analyzes the Erythrae,Miletos,Thassos,Mytilene listed as tribute history of the city,found that the policies of Athens against the secondary hegemonic city-states were mostly made according to the specific local political and economic conditions,which fully reflected the characteristics of flexibility in Athens imperialism.In Erythrae,Athens acquiesced in the long-term maintenance of regional hegemony,and listened to the tributary opinions of Erythrain in appeal,and adjusted the form of tributary of Erythrae and its dependent states according to the specific circumstances of each tributary period.In the case of Miletus,the main factor affecting regional hegemony was factional disputes,and Athens did not become an obstacle to the development of Miletus hegemony,and even indirectly helped the restoration of Miletus regional hegemony.With regard to Thasos,Athens,though it had stepped into its sphere of influence in Thrace,recognized Thasos’ possession of its colony after ensuring that Thasos was no longer able to resist after the rebellion,and returned most of the cities to simplify the process of collecting tribute.Athens’ policy towards Allies such as Mittilene,who was ship tribute polis,was relatively equal,which showed its peculiarity.For most time of the empire,Athens secured Mytilene’s interests in Thrace and on the Asian coast and acquiesced in his efforts to expand his sphere of influence.At the same time Athens supported the elite of the city-state and enjoyed all kinds of benefits and privileges.Accordingly,these ship tribute cities and their subsidiary areas provided military power to Athens and maintained the stability of the Athenian Empire.Even after Mytilene’s rebellion,Athens continued to support regional hegemony while ensuring its own stability.In the end,I have carried on the reflection to the Athenian imperialism.Traditional studies from the perspective of Athens have fully proved Athens’ hegemonic measures in politics,economy and other aspects during the imperial period.In this paper,the dependent states are taken as the main object of study,and the corresponding conclusion is drawn that the Athenian imperialism fully considered the local specific conditions when targeting the subordinate hegemonic city-states,which reflected the flexibility of the Athenian policy.Athenian imperialism was a flexible policy based on securing its own position.At the same time,in this historical period,the Athenian Empire presented a form of hierarchical hegemony.Perhaps due to the high administrative cost and low income in ancient times,Athens did not directly rule over the city,but presented a two-level management structure.Athens,as the supreme hegemon,ruled over all polis in the empire.At the second level were the stronger polis of the region,which acted as administrators of the empire,and as sub-hegemons,they controlled their dependent city,but they were also under the control of Athens,and they led the dependent polis to pay tribute to Athens.At the bottom were ordinary city-states.Due to racial,cultural,economic and other factors,they were closely connected with the sub-hegemony,so they could not easily break away from the control of the regional hegemony polis and were directly exploited by the regional hegemonic polis.At the same time,they were also members of the Athenian Empire.Last but not least,some polis belonged to the periphery of the empire,and most of them were small or weak.They were not included in the influence sphere of regional hegemony and played a very marginalized role in the interior of the empire.These polis,either paying tribute directly to Athens or lacking the administrative capacity to do so,formed equal groups under Athenian control. |
